Historically the
Marigny was home to many free women of color who owned cottages there.

In 1975, when the
Faubourg Marigny was placed on the National Register of Historic Places,
the neighborhood began a surge of revitalization. According to New Orleans
City Business January 2002 profile of the neighborhood:

On the one
hand, new investment in the area over the last 20 years has almost eliminated
blighted housing ... and driven property values skyward. On the other,
gentrification that has pushed lower-income residents out of the neighborhood
and new commercial development pressures threaten to change the character
of the district, some say. Its a lot less blue-collar than
it used to be, says Julian Mutter, a Marigny homeowner since the
late 1970s. Now, there are more artists, gay couples and retirees than
dockworkers, shopkeepers and young families, he says.

An excerpt showing Faubourg
Marigny from the 1815 Plan of the city and suburbs of New Orleans.

Charming
suburb, home to many ethnic groups

Faubourg Marigny
is considered the first suburb of New Orleans. The Marigny neighborhood
is a maze of angular streets that form triangles, pentagons and squares.
Numbers jump their sequence mid-block and so do street names. The Creole
cottage is the predominant architectural style of this neighborhood.

Spanish, French Creoles, Italians, Germans, Irish and many free persons of color
were among the first ethnic inhabitants to live in this section of the
city.

Many free women of
color or Creole women owned property in the Marigny. Many of these women
were involved in relationships with white men who gave them these cottages
as gifts.

Frenchmen
Street

Many dance spots,
distinctive restaurants, bars and a coffee house have popped up on Frenchmen
Street. The Praline Connection was one of the first of these to
open. In 1991, Curtis Moore, Jr. and Cecil Kaigler, who met when they
were employed at British Petroleum, decided to open their soul food restaurant
in this up and coming neighborhood. Their restaurant was so successful
that they opened a second location in the Warehouse District in 1993.

Neighborhood legend
says that this branch of the New Orleans Canal & Banking Company
was robbed by the infamous Bonnie and Clyde!.

Bits
and pieces of the Marignys history

The land originally
belonged to Claude DuBreuil, who found himself in the Bastille
after some underhanded dealings with the city. Next, Mathurin Dreux wanted
to build a huge sugar plantation on the land, but died before it happened.
Balthazer Mazan, the next owner, mysteriously ended up in a Spanish prison
and the governors secretary became the new owner. Lorenzo Sigur
traded the land with Pierre Marigny for a plantation in Chalmette. After
his fathers death, Bernard Xavier Phillippe de Marigny inherited
the land in the early 1800s.

Bernard Marigny
was quite a colorful character and is credited with having brought the
game of craps to this country. Bernard Marigny divided his vast estate
into small lots designed for residential development very shortly after
inheriting the land. Bernard had many debts and the smaller the land parcels
the more there was to sell. The area grew rapidly. Lots were sold all
the way into the 1820s. However, the Faubourg Marigny began to decline
in the mid-1800s. The reason for the decline around the time of the Civil
War is unclear.

Some believe that
Bernard alienated many French Creole families in his dealings with American
developers. Also, with the development of the Pontchatrain Railroad in
1830, many people began settling further down Elysian Fields. For more
than the next 100 years, the area remained considerably poorer than it
was at its inception.

Neighborhood Profiles Project Document prepared by the City of New Orleans Office of Policy Planning and the City Planning Commission. Published December 1980. Study available at the Williams Research Center (non-circulating collection).